our January 2000 issue of NMSR Reports, we gave the
"Put Up Or Shut Up" Award for 1999 to
Jonathan Sarfati
of the Kentucky-based ministry Answers in Genesis. While affiliated
with Answers in
Genesis (AIG), Sarfati lives in Australia, where there's an AIG
oasis. Sarfati wrote a 1999 book entitled Refuting Evolution, and
billed it as a response to the National Academy of Sciences' book
Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science. Sarfati's book
was heavily promoted by AIG; see, for example, their quarter-page ad
in USA Today on August 27th, 1999 (NMSR Reports, Sept. '99).

Sarfati makes the standard creationist pitch of equating evolution
we can observe with "microevolution" or "variation within a
kind," and argues that "macroevolution," evolution of new
"kinds," has never been observed. Sarfati says the actual Creationist
model lies between the "tree-of-life" branching of species used in
evolution and what he calls a straw-man "lawn" of separate species,
with several blades of grass appearing simultaneously (one "blade"
per species or "kind.") Sarfati envisions an "orchard" in which a
small number of trees represent the original created kinds. There is
variation within each "kind" (so each tree in the orchard looks like
the branching of evolution), but no commonality between separate
trees ("kinds"). The three models ( tree, lawn, and orchard) appear
in Figures 1 - 3 below, which are quite similar to what Sarfati
presents in his book.

The reason Sarfati was given the "Put Up or Shut Up" Award was
that he described, in his figure 3 of the "True Creationist Orchard,"
a model that creationists have never,
ever defined. No creationist has ever had the guts to
define what the "baramin" (kinds) actually are, and for good reason.
The definition of "kinds" must be forever elusive -
a perpetual "moving goalpost"
- because that is what serves the creationist cause.
To reveal the names of the "kinds" would jeopardize all forms of
creationism, from young-earth Biblical literalists to supposedly
non-religious "intelligent design."

Why are creationists reluctant to describe even the simplest
details of their true concepts of the diversity of life? Because
there is no single creationist
model of life. Creationists don't have to actually explain
biology, after all - their real goal is
simply to stifle education about evolution. Creation "scientists"
don't scientifically study creation; they study better ways to bash
evolution, which they perceive as a threat to their religious
views.

Fig. 1. "The Evolutionary 'Tree' "

This is what those rascally evolution scientists think happens in
the origin of species.

Fig. 2. "The Alleged Creationist 'Lawn' "

This has no variation within a "kind" - once a species appears, it
doesn't change. All species appeared at the same time, 6,000 years
ago. Sarfati says this is a strawman model evolutionists use to
unfairly attack creationism.

Fig. 3. "The True Creationist 'Orchard' "

Sarfati presents this as the "true" creationist model, showing
variation within kinds, but no evolution of new kinds.

The creationist model for life's diversity is as fluid as
the shifting sands of the Sahara. It evolves to suit the
circumstances, and adapts as required. Consider what Intelligent
Design proponent Jonathan Wells of Seattle's Discovery Institute said
in the Detroit News on March 14, 1999: "...according to the fossil
record all the major types of animals appeared abruptly about 530
million years ago, in a geological period known as the Cambrian.
There is no fossil evidence that they ever shared a common ancestor.
This 'Cambrian explosion' of living things contradicts the
branching-tree pattern predicted by Darwin's theory." I discussed
this view in the April 1999 NMSR Reports, noting "But his 'types' of
animals don't include amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals, which
all came into being hundreds of millions of years after the Cambrian
explosion with extant fossil records showing common descent."

Wells responded in the June 1999 NMSR Reports, "Regarding the
Cambrian explosion: It's true that in my Melvindale op-ed piece I
wrote that 'all the major types of animals' arose in the Cambrian, by
which I meant the major animal phyla. There is no substantial
controversy over this among paleontologists. I used 'major types'
instead of 'phyla' because of the audience I was addressing, but this
usage is not unique among science writers. As you correctly point
out, the various classes of vertebrates arose later; but the chordate
phylum is represented in the Cambrian fauna."

So here is Intelligent Designist Jonathan Wells at one end of the
"kinds" spectrum: equating "kinds" with phyla (there are about 40
metazoan phyla) permits creationists to argue that the Cambrian
explosion is evidence against evolution, since many of those phyla
appeared "abruptly," within a "few" tens of millions of years.

And at the other end of the spectrum is Jonathan Sarfati, who
essentially argues that "kinds" are reproductively isolated
populations - close to what biologists refer to as "species."

On February 18th, 2000, I wrote Sarfati the following note
by e-mail:

Dear Dr. Sarfati,

Regarding Figure 3, page 39, of your
book Refuting Evolution: A Response to the NAS' Teaching About
Evolution and the Nature of Science,:

Is there a definitive list of the
baramin (kinds) shown in Fig. 3, of the True Creationist Orchard? How
many trees are in the orchard? I.e., how many kinds are there, and
what are they called? If there's any place on the web or the library
with such a list, I'd be most grateful for that
information.

Thanks very much for any help you may
be able to provide.

Sincerely,

Dave Thomas

On Feb. 20th, Sarfati's reply appeared. He wrote
"Tell you what: first you provide a list of all
the true 'biological species' in the world as defined by reproductive
isolation. Please provide a statistical analysis about how many
'biological species' correspond to a taxonomic single so-called
'species', and how many so-called 'genera' and even 'families' are
really a single polytypic 'biological species'.

- Dr Sarfati"

On Feb. 22nd, I wrote to Sarfati:

"Let's try this again, shall we? Since
you're a fan of chess, perhaps some chess terminology would be
appropriate.

SARFATI'S OPENING GAMBIT: You published a
book, _Refuting Evolution: A Response to the NAS' Teaching About
Evolution and the Nature of Science_ . In this book, you describe
THREE MODELS OF ORIGINS:

Many, many more are available. Furthermore,
many science sites are available with information on species
definitions, numbers, and etc.... Now, I have put your king in check
by noting that MANY DESCRIPTIONS BY MAINSTREAM SCIENTISTS OF PARTS OF
FIG. 1 - THE EVOLUTIONARY TREE - ARE AVAILABLE, and by challenging
YOU to provide comparable DESCRIPTIONS BY CREATION SCIENTISTS OF FIG.
3 - THE CREATIONIST ORCHARD.

On Feb. 23rd, Sarfati wrote "If they
[scientists] can't agree on the branches, and certainly not
on the trunk and roots, then they haven't got a tree. The 'tree' is a
deduction from materialistic philosophy. ... it's hypocritical of you
to demand that I list every single tree in the orchard if you can't
list every single branch of your hypothetical single tree. But
creationists have provided empirical criteria that should help
determine whether organisms are members of the same created kind. I
outline the criteria in an article on mammoths in the March 2000
Creation magazine. [Online
here.]
But they are hardly original with me -- I cite the hybridization
criteria of Drs Frank Marsh and Siegfried Scherer, both recognised
biologists with publications in 'mainstream' literature.
..."

On. Feb. 24th, I replied "You're really
missing the point here. Of course, not all scientists agree on all
branchings of the Tree of Life. It's actually quite rare for
thousands and thousands of aggressive researchers to agree on the
detailed linkages of over a million species (and that's just the
living ones...).

The POINT you're missing is that scientists
DO publish their descriptions of the tree of Life for others to
critique. The two websites I sent you contained relationships among
21,754 taxa (9,657 from the Arizona site, and 12,097 on TreeBASE).
You're quibbling that not all published versions of the tree are in
agreement, when the POINT is that THERE ***ARE*** PUBLISHED VERSIONS
OF THE EVOLUTIONARY TREE OF LIFE. My question to you from the start
has been simply "WHERE ARE THE PUBLISHED VERSIONS OF THE CREATIONIST
ORCHARD?"

Further, by focusing on areas of
disagreement, you conveniently gloss over areas of substantial
agreement. For example, all the trees I looked at in these web sites,
and in several evolution texts, place echinodermata as more closely
related to chordata (which includes 'vertebrates') than other groups
such as annelida ('worms')."

On Feb. 25th, Sarfati wrote "Creationists
have also published hybridisation studies on things like the bird
family Anitidae, showing that the kind in this case probably the
family. And it would be interesting to study more about the wolphin
at http://www.hotspots.hawaii.com/Wolphin.html , a fertile
trans-generic hybrid between a bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops
truncatus), and a false killer whale (Pseudorca crassidens).
Evidently these two things are really a polytypic biological species
not separate genera, and certainly in the same kind."

And that's all I ever got from Sarfati on the list of the "kinds"
: mammoths, a family of birds, and a group of whales/dolphins. It's
obvious that if Sarfati's "kinds" are defined by reproductive
isolation, there will be so many "kinds" that Sarfati's "orchard"
will look much more like his Figure 2 (the "creationist lawn") than
his Figure 3 of the "orchard" itself. It's also obvious that
Sarfati's "orchard" appears as it does because the chart starts with
"creation" a few thousand years ago. If the time of "creation" is
pushed back, the "Orchard" will clearly look more and more like the
tree of life; indeed, I made Figure 3. simply by clipping of the top
of my Fig. 1, the evolutionary tree itself.

Our discussion covered many topics, but Sarfati's replies
invariably used polemics rather than scientific substance. An
example: at one point Sarfati declared "If evolutionists really had
the evidence, they wouldn't need to rule out alternative explanations
by decree, and invoke legal bully-boys
like the ACLU who scream blue murder if
their pet theory is challenged..." I asked him to name the Australian
chapter of the ACLU, but this request was ignored. I also mentioned
John Stear's NO
Answers in Genesis! Australian web site, which describes how
creationists bullied
scientists trying to ask questions about the "Noah's Ark" court case
there. Sarfati countered this by referring me to an article
he wrote for the True Origins website, billed as a response to
Stear's website. But Sarfati's article completely ignored the copious
amounts of cold, hard data at Stear's site, and instead simply
pointed out that Stear had elsewhere supported humanism. In
other words, Stear has no religion, and thus is wrong. Sarfati's
piece is nothing than a collection of ad hominem attacks on
Australian scientists for their positions on religion; "science" has
absolutely nothing to do with it. Incredibly, Sarfati's article
doesn't even link to Stear's site, the
subject of the piece.

Creationists have no "theory." Whatever they have, it's time to
stick a fork in it. It's done.